For the ice hockey player see Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985)[1] was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri.

Career

Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Turner's career as a performer stretched from the 1920s into the 1980s.

Known variously as The Boss of the Blues, and Big Joe Turner (due to his 6'2", 250+ lbs stature), Turner was born in Kansas City and first discovered his love of music through involvement in the church. Turner's father was killed in a train accident when Joe was only four years old.^[1] He began singing on street corners for money, leaving school at age fourteen to begin working in Kansas City's club scene, first as a cook, and later as a singing bartender. He eventually became known as The Singing Barman, and worked in such venues as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset, where he and his piano playing partner Pete Johnson became resident performers. The Sunset was managed by Piney Brown. It featured "separate but equal" facilities for white patrons. Turner wrote "Piney Brown Blues" in his honor and sang it throughout his entire career.

At that time Kansas City was a wide-open town run by "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Despite this, the clubs were subject to frequent raids by the police, but as Turner recounts, "The Boss man would have his bondsmen down at the police station before we got there. We'd walk in, sign our names and walk right out. Then we would cabaret until morning".

His partnership with boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson proved fruitful. Together they headed to New York in 1936, where they appeared on a bill with Benny Goodman, but as Turner recounts, "After our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn't ready for us yet, so we headed back to K.C.". Eventually they were spotted by the talent scout, John H. Hammond in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in one of his "From Spirituals to Swing" concerts at Carnegie Hall, which was instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience.

Due in part to their appearance at Carnegie Hall, Turner and Johnson scored a major hit with "Roll 'Em Pete". The track contained one of the earliest recorded examples of a back beat. It was a song which Turner recorded many times, with various combinations of musicians, over the ensuing years.

In 1939, along with boogie players Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Café Society, a club in New York City, where they appeared on the same bill as Billie Holiday and Frank Newton's band. Besides "Roll 'Em, Pete", Turner's best known recordings from this period are probably "Cherry Red", "I Want A Little Girl" and "Wee Baby Blues".

In 1941, he headed to Los Angeles where he performed in Duke Ellington's revue Jump for Joy in Hollywood. He appeared as a singing policeman in a sketch called "He's on the Beat". L.A. became his home base for a time, and in 1945 he opened his own bar, The Blue Moon Club with Pete Johnson.

Turner made lots of records, not only with Johnson but with the pianists Art Tatum and Sammy Price and with various small jazz ensembles.^[1] He recorded on several record labels, particularly National Records, and also appeared with the Count Basie Orchestra. In his career, Turner successively led the transition from big bands to jump blues to rhythm and blues, and finally to rock and roll. Turner was a master of traditional blues verses and at the legendary Kansas City jam sessions he could swap choruses with instrumental soloists for hours.

In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün, who signed him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records. Turner recorded a number of hits for them, including the blues standards, "Chains of Love" and "Sweet Sixteen" before hitting it big in 1954 with "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which not only enhanced his career, turning him into a teenage favorite, but also helped to transform popular music.

Although the cover version of the song by Bill Haley & His Comets, with the risqué lyrics incompletely cleaned up, was a bigger hit, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introduced thereby to the whole world of rhythm and blues. Elvis Presley showed he needed no such introduction. His version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" combined Turner's lyrics with Haley's arrangement, but was not successful as a single release.

Amidst the rock songs he found time to cut the classic Boss of the Blues album.^[1]

After a number of hits in this vein, Turner left popular music behind and returned to his roots as a singer with small jazz combos, recording numerous albums in that style in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, Bill Haley helped revive Turner's career by lending him the Comets for a series a popular recordings in Mexico (apparently no one thought of getting the two to record a duet of "Shake, Rattle and Roll", as no such recording has yet surfaced). In 1977 he recorded a version of Guitar Slim's song, "The Things That I Used to Do".

In the 1960s and 1970s he was reclaimed by jazz and blues, appearing at many festivals and recording for the impresario Norman Granz's Pablo label, once with his friendly rival, Jimmy Witherspoon. He also worked with the German boogie-woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger.^[1]

It is a mark of his dominance as a singer that he won the Esquire magazine award for male vocalist in 1945, the Melody Maker award for best 'new' vocalist in 1956, and the British Jazz Journal award as top male singer in 1965. His career thus stretched from the bar rooms of Kansas City in the 1920s (at the age of twelve when he performed with a pencilled moustache and his father's hat), on to the European jazz music festivals of the 1980s.

In 1983, only two years before his death, Turner was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.^[3]

Death

He died in Inglewood, California in November 1985, at the age of seventy four of a heart attack, having suffered the earlier effects of arthritis, a stroke and diabetes. Big Joe Turner was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.[2]

Tribute

The late, New York Times music critic Robert Palmer, said: "...his voice, pushing like a Count Basie solo, rich and grainy as a section of saxophones, which dominated the room with the sheer sumptuousness of its sound.[3]

Quotation

Roll 'em boy, Gonna jump for joy, Yeah man, happy as a baby boy, My baby just brought me a brand new choo-choo toy.

:"Roll 'Em, Pete" -- by Joe Turner and Pete Johnson

Most famous recordings

• "Roll 'Em, Pete" - 1938; (available in many versions over the years. Used for the million-dollar first scene in Spike Lee's film, Malcolm X). http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000002MHB
• "Chains Of Love" - 1951 † (this was Turner's first million seller. The song was written by 'Nugetre' (words) - Ahmet Ertegün, Van Wallis (music), and the disc reached the million by 1954).^[4]
• "Honey Hush" - 1953 †
• "Shake, Rattle and Roll" - 1954
• "Flip Flop And Fly" - 1955 † (has sold a million through the years. The song was written by Charles Calhoun and Turner, although credited to the latter's wife, Lou Willie Turner).^[4]
• "Cherry Red" - 1956
• "Corrine, Corrina" - 1956 † (the fourth million seller...with adaption by J. Mayo Williams, Mitchell Parish and Bo Chatmon in 1932. This disc was #41, and spent 10 weeks in the Billboard chart).^[4]
• "Wee Baby Blues" - 1956; (a song Turner had been singing since his Kingfish Club days)
• "Midnight Special" - 1957

Tracks marked as † were million selling discs.

Notes

References

• The Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues - ISBN 1-86155-385-4
• Jumpin' the Blues - Joe Turner with Pete Johnson's Orchestra - Arhoolie Records - Liner notes
• Rocks in my Bed - Big Joe Turner - International Music Co. - Liner notes
• The Chronological Joe Turner - 1949-1950 - Big Joe Turner - Classics Records - Liner notes
• Rock and Roll - Big Joe Turner - Atlantic Records - Liner notes
• Shout, Rattle and Roll - Big Joe Turner - Proper Records (Four CD boxed set - 2005) - Liner notes

External links

• Big Joe Turner from the Cascade Blues Association
• Big Joe Turner fansite
• www.hoyhoy biography